


Things Holster Likes

by Euphorion



Series: Best Laid Plans [2]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Asexual Character, Bisexual Male Character, F/M, M/M, bisexual Holster, gratuitous pop culture references, romantic ace!Ransom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-08
Updated: 2015-05-08
Packaged: 2018-03-29 14:39:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3899965
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Euphorion/pseuds/Euphorion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The thing about Ransom was, he wasn’t gay for his best friend.</p><p>++ </p><p>This is the long overdue companion piece to my other CP fic, <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/2791685">Best Laid Plans. </a> I recommend reading both to get the full experience of the events, but it doesn't really matter which you read first or anything.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Things Holster Likes

The girl across the table from Ransom toyed with her fork. “So,” she said. “Where are you from?”

“Canada,” Ransom said flatly. He felt rather than saw Holster stiffen beside him. 

“Oh, but I meant like,” she started, “ _before_ —“

“I am _so_ glad you asked,” Holster said smoothly, leaning halfway in front of Ransom so Amy (Ami? Ransom felt like it was spelled weird when Holster texted him her name) was forced to look at him instead. Ransom sat back a little, let his arm slide around Holster’s back, and watched him out of the corner of his eye. He had his best flirting face on, all wide-eyed enthusiasm and earnest smiles because he flirted like he was maybe twelve years old. “It’s actually a fascinating story. I’m from Nigeria, originally.”

Ami blinked at him. “Um,” she said, “what? I was talking—“

Holster winked at her. “I’m actually something of a big deal back home.” He narrowed his eyes. “You ever get those scam emails that are like ‘heyyy I’m a dispossessed Nigerian prince, give me all your money?’”

She scowled at him, confused. “Sure, hasn’t everyone?”

Holster raised one eyebrow very slowly. “I’m not saying they’re not scams,” he said, “but I _am_ saying my life story may have inspired a hacker or two.”

Holster’s own date—Emily?—sighed and sipped her water. “You’re not a Nigerian prince,” she said.

Holster deflated a little—just enough. “Fine,” he admitted. “I’m not a prince. But I am pretty rich, and I am Nigerian.”

Ransom fought not to grin, not to let his eyes flicker back and forth between the two girls too obviously, wondering which—if either—would bite. Ami chewed her lip, eyeing Holster suspiciously. “If you’re Nigerian, why are you wh—“

Ransom sat immediately forward, speaking in perfect excited unison with Holster. “Oh my god, Karen,” they chorused, “you can’t just as people why they’re white!”

They’d barely finished before Holster started to laugh, hard, curling a little into Ransom’s side, and that set _him_ off, and yeah, you know what, fuck this double date noise. Ransom wiped tears from his eyes and stood, stretching upward. “You wanna bounce?” he asked, holding out a hand to Holster.

Holster took it. “Let’s go, bro.” He raised an eyebrow at Ami as he slid out from their table via Ransom’s seat. “Sorry, casual racism is a one-strike kinda deal, y’know?”

“I wasn’t—“ she protested, but Ransom and Holster were already wandering away. It wasn’t really a dick move—they hadn’t ordered yet and it was just the shitty on-campus café anyway, but.

“Shame,” Ransom said, knocking Holster with a shoulder. “Your date was pretty hot.”

Holster raised his eyebrows at him. “You think? Ami was way cuter, I thought.”

Ransom blinked, and realized he’d barely even noticed. They’d been on this date mostly for Holster’s benefit, and he’d spent most of it observing his friend and checking Emily against a list he had in his head of Things Holster Likes, seeing what his best bro thought of her. She’d checked like six of ten boxes, appearance-wise (including “super dark eyes” and “tall, like really pretty tall”, which were rare finds), and they hadn’t progressed in the date far enough for any of his personality lists to come into play but she’d seemed smart and funny enough.

Okay, so maybe he was a little obsessive. But it was just the way his brain worked; he was a science guy, and a strategist, and a hockey player, and all of those things combined into a dude who really likes lists. And goals. And lists that fulfilled goals.

“Maybe we should’ve swapped,” he said at last.

Holster chuckled and turned his head to stare upward. “I love when they take the bait,” he said. He didn’t look too disappointed that they had to cut their date short; his face was relaxed and happy. The late afternoon sun played over his little smile, the sky catching bright and gold and blue in the lenses of his glasses. 

Ransom grinned sideways at him. “Almost as good as when they actually believe you’re _The_ Nigerian Prince and give you money.”

Holster snorted. “That was just Lardo, and I’m pretty sure she gave us five bucks so we’d go away and let her paint.”

Ransom waved a hand. “Same thing.”

They walked in silence for a while. Fall was fading into winter, and Samwell was in the last throes of its stupidly gorgeous tree season. Midterms were a fading memory and finals were an oncoming storm and Ransom—didn’t really want to think about the passage of time. He’d been feeling kind of off about it, lately, about. Life, and shit. He knew part of it was the looming specter of senior year and how totally different Samwell would be without Jack and Shitty, but there was another element to it, too, one he couldn’t really pin down. A restlessness, a discontent.

They jogged in tandem up the Haus front steps. Holster paused, and Ransom was going to ask why when he smelled it, too—cinnamon and apples and nutmeg and everything else beautiful and delicious in the world, all swirling under the front door and into the autumn air like an invitation. 

Ransom looked at Holster. “Bitty,” they said in unison.

Eric Bittle was, as he had been basically since he first set foot in the Haus, in the kitchen. He was utterly and totally comfortable there, and his very presence seemed to make it a nicer, more welcoming place, somehow more sunlit, somehow more clean.

Usually.

There was flour on every surface. The oven was on, and next to it a completed pie, golden and beautiful. That was where the smell was coming from, but there were two empty pie shells on the counter and two large mixing bowls beside them. Usually Bitty could be seen humming to himself, or outright singing as he baked, moving between his ingredient stations with a twitch of his tiny hips. But today he was working mechanically, unsmiling, his eyebrows drawn together and his eyes red.

Ransom clenched his fists at his sides, and cast a sideways look at Holster, who looked back, eyes narrowed and mouth set. Nobody messed with Bitty.

They moved into the kitchen quietly, watching Bitty warily, trying to determine what might be wrong. 

"Bitty?" Ransom asked after they'd both been standing there for several silent minutes. "Are you okay?"

Bitty sighed. "Well," he said, frowning slightly at the mass of pans and jars that surrounded him. "Shitty introduced me to his friend Nik today."

Ransom scowled. Nik was not just Shitty’s friend, but Holster’s too, and he’d always—rubbed Ransom wrong, somehow. It was something he’d actually done some pretty intense self-examination about, worried that it stemmed from some homophobic bias he’d internalized as a high school jock—Nik was on the flamboyant side—but at this point he’d spent enough time among other, varyingly flamboyant queer men (Bitty included) with no problem at all to know that it was a specific dislike. Really very specific, because it only really reared its head when Nik and Holster were hanging out together. Nik alone was fine; kind of egotistical, but mostly fine.

"Man, I hate that guy," he said. "What'd he do? Was he a dick to you? I'll punch him in the mouth."

Holster stared sideways at him. "What's your problem with Nik? He's a good dude. Great taste in movies."

Ransom wanted to say _I don’t like the way he acts around you_ but he didn’t know how. "Movies do not make the man," he muttered.

"He was fine," Bitty said, reassuring. "Better than fine, he was." He sighed sharply. "I think Shitty bribed him to flirt with me."

Ransom blinked at him. "He what?" 

Holster said, slower, "was Jack there?"

Bitty stared at him. "Um. At first, yeah. Why?"

Holster pivoted and gave Ransom a significant glance. "The plan," he said.

Ransom stared at him. He’d totally fucking forgotten about the plan.

One of the reasons he knew he wasn’t a homophobe (he’s got a list of those, too, beginning with ‘I really love Beyonce & really hate Katy Perry’ and ending with ‘kind of want to kiss men?’, added really late at night, not—dishonestly, but also not entirely accurately, because it wasn’t _men_ , it…)

Anyway. One of the reasons he knew he wasn’t a homophobe was he was really fucking tired of watching Bitty and Jack tiptoe around each other, and he was really ready for them to just be making out, already.

The thing was, Jack was too—Jack had stormed into Shitty’s room while Ransom had been studying with him one night and let out a plaintive, “I think I’m going crazy.” Shitty had slung an arm around him and octopus’d him into bed beside him and for the first time Ransom could remember Jack had just gone with it, burying his face in Shitty’s chest. “His hair looks so good,” he’d said, quietly but not quietly enough, and Ransom had, out of respect for a fellow Canuck’s dignity, taken his textbooks elsewhere.

He thought maybe that night had been what planted the seeds of The Plan in Shitty’s head: make Jack jealous enough, and maybe he would actually fucking _do_ something.

Bitty's shoulders dropped in dismay. "Oh no," he said, "not you guys too!"

"Did Nik keep flirting with you after Jack left?" Ransom asked, because it didn’t all have to be staged, and maybe that would make Bitty feel a little better.

Bitty cocked his head, thinking. "Yeah," he said. "if anything he got more direct."

Holster nodded, as usual right there with Ransom’s line of thinking. Gratifying, that. "That's real," he said. "Shitty maybe asked him to come make a show of it, but he really meant the flirting, if that helps.”

Bitty licked his lips, looking embarrassed. "He asked me if I wanted to help him practice his lines.”

Ransom snorted. How lame could you get?

At his side, Holster nodded. "A classic, that one," his tone a little rueful, a little nostalgic, and Ransom felt his jaw tighten, involuntary.

Bitty shook his head. "I told him maybe some other time."

Ransom raised his eyebrows, because, wait, what? "You're interested in that guy?" he asked. "But—" 

Holster jabbed an elbow into his ribs, and he stopped himself before he said something stupid like _but what about Jack?_

Bitty waited. "But?"

"But he's such a dick," Ransom finished lamely.

"Christ, calm down about it," Holster said, too-loud, completing their clumsy cover.

"I'm not exactly spoiled for choice, boys," Bitty sighed. "Samwell might be filled with gays, but the crossover between those circles and ours is kind of minimal. Ancestral fear of jocks and everything."

Ransom carefully did not look sideways at Holster. Bitty never talked relationships. “You haven’t met anyone you might be interested in?”

Bitty wiped his hands on his apron nervously. “Well,” he said slowly, “that’s not really the question, is it, it’s all about the other way around."

"Bittle," Jack called, rounding the corner into the kitchen, "are you in here—"

He stopped. Ransom gave him a little wave, trying not to be pissed at him for interrupting. He’d basically emotional-cockblocked himself—if he’d waited a little longer, they might have been able to get Bitty to actually admit something.

Bitty went red. Maybe he realized, too, how close they’d come to Jack hearing something. "Jack, hey." He ran a knuckle under his eye, wiping flour off his face. "You don't know anything about Shitty's plan, do you?"

Jack scowled, looking from him to Ransom to Holster and back. "Plan for what?"

Bitty sighed, relieved. "Thank goodness." He crossed to the first pie where it was cooling on the counter. “Then _you_ can have pie."

He cut a piece and passed it—cruelly, unfairly—right in front of both Ransom and Holster. Ransom pouted at him, but Bitty was too focused on Jack’s face as he handed him the pie to even notice.

"Thanks," Jack said, soft, and Holster’s hand descended on Ransom’s shoulder, tugging him away.

"We're gonna just go," he announced.

Ransom held up a hopeful hand even as he moved with Holster. "Can I just have a little piece—'"

"No pie for conspirators," Bitty said firmly, his voice following them out. "Repent, and we'll see."

Holster relaxed his grip on Ransom’s shoulder but kept his hand there, subtly steering him, until they were up in their room and he’d closed the door behind them.

Ransom turned to look at him. “What’s up, bro?”

Holster stuck his hands in his pockets, cocking his head. His face was serious. “I thought you were over your thing with Nik.”

Ransom looked away. “I don’t have a thing with Nik.”

“Bro,” Holster said softly, and took a step forward. “C’mon.”

“I don’t,” Ransom protested. “I just—I don’t like the way he interacts with you. He’s, like.” He passed over _handsy_ and _flirty_ and _desperate_ , all different levels of unfair, and settled on, “Cloying.”

Holster raised an eyebrow at him. “Cloying.”

Ransom shrugged, still not quite meeting his eyes. “Like. You’re not into him, you know? Guy needs to deal with it.”

Understanding dawned on Holster’s face. “Oh,” he said, and then he scratched the back of his head. “I mean—I’m not _not_ into him,” he said slowly. “We’ve hooked up, you know that.”

Ransom blew out a breath and went to sit on the bottom bunk, which was currently vaguely designated as his bed, although they ended up swapping half the time (and occasionally, when they’re both too drunk to climb the ladder, just sharing). “Yeah,” he said. “I know, but. It’s not like you’re really interested in him, like, date-wise.” He hoped. God, did he hope.

Reason #16 or so he wasn’t a homophobe: his very best bro was, as he called it, “conditionally bi”, and it had never even occurred to him to have a problem with that.

Holster shook his head and came to sit next to him, their knees brushing. “True,” he said. “I’m not looking to date guys. But if Nik’s around when I’m stoned, yeah, I might get off with him, and him being touchy the rest of the time doesn’t like cross any boundaries or anything.” He nudged Ransom with a shoulder. “So don’t feel like you gotta defend my honor or anything, dude.”

Ransom wanted to say that it wasn’t about that, but then he’d have to explain what it was about and he didn’t think he could. So he just nodded, and leaned a little more into Holster’s shoulder.

Holster squinted at him. “He’s, uh. He’s coming over next week.”

Ransom blinked. “Oh,” he said.

Holster nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “Shitty invited him, told me to make some excuse to you. Apparently Nik thinks you hate him.”

Ransom scowled at his knees. “I don’t.”

Holster laughed at him. “Convincing, only you said you did, like, fifteen minutes ago? In the kitchen? Anyway. Maybe it’s good, maybe you can put not defending my honor into practice.”

Ransom made a face. “Do I have to? If he doesn’t want me here, maybe it’s just better for me not to be, right?”

“Can’t make you do anything you don’t want to,” Holster said, looking sideways at him. “But I’d like you to be there. You should work this shit out, you know?” He smiled a little. “Besides, we’re gonna watch Bend It like Beckham.”

Ransom grinned. “Yeah, okay, I’m not letting Nik keep me away from that shit.”

Holster grabbed the back of his head and shook him a little, pleased. “Thought not,” he said. “Sports movies that are _also_ romcoms. The perfect genre.”

“Literally though,” Ransom agreed. “Literally.” He lay down backward, taking Holster’s arm—and thus the rest of Holster—down with him. He still felt—displaced, kind of. Stagnant and rushing all at once, and he just wanted to be still.

Holster—because he was probably grown in a tube specifically to be Ransom’s best friend—seemed to totally understand, lying down with him in comfortable silence, listening to the warm creak of a well-lived-in Haus.

“Wanna bet Bitty and Jack are making out by now?” Holster asked absently.

“Nice try, bro,” Ransom answered, his head fully pillowed on Holster’s arm. 

Holster folded his elbow and curled his wrist down so he could run his blunt nails across Ransom’s scalp. “Fair,” he admitted. “Wanna bet Jack’s made a stumbling idiot of himself and Bitty, who inexplicably finds his hideous romantic incompetence adorable, will be much more well-disposed towards concepts like giving us pie?”

Ransom really didn’t want to move, but he did anyway, pushing himself to his feet. “Much more likely,” he said, and offered Holster a hand up. “Let’s go find out.”

+

“They should remake this movie,” Shitty said, blinking owlishly at the screen of his laptop where it was balanced on a stack of Ransom’s textbooks, the perfect height to watch from their mostly-prostrate pile on the bottom bunk, “but like, with hockey.”

“Hockey rom-coms,” Ransom breathed.

Holster shifted at his side, meeting his eyes excitedly. _Hockey rom-coms_ , he mouthed, and Ransom had no idea why he wasn’t speaking out loud but it was fucking _hilarious_ , and he reached out to poke at the corner of his mouth like maybe he could press an unmute button. Holster’s eyes went a little weird, like, wide, and he twitched his lips sideways, and then from his other side Nik said loudly, “Yeah, but they’d have to make it actually queer this time,” and Holster pulled away to sit up a little, blinking at the screen.

Ransom sat up, too, feeling—weirdly disappointed.

“I dunno,” Shitty said thoughtfully. “Not to dispute the fact that it was really shitty of them to queerbait the hell out of their audience and, like, obviously this was the last thing on the writers’ minds but. You could totally read the relationship between Jess and Jules as, like.” He waved a hand that still had the burnt-out roach between two of his fingers. “You know what I’m saying. Romantic, but not sexual.”

Nik hummed. His face was still turned to the screen but one of his hands was settled comfortably on Holster’s knee. “So like they’re both biromantic?”

“Queerplatonic,” Shitty said. “That’s the word I was thinking of.”

Ransom nudged Holster, half to get him to stop looking at Nik. “Do you know what any of the shit they’re saying means?” He stage-whispered, dipping probably too close to Holster’s ear.

Holster shook his head. “Barely,” he admitted at the same volume. “I think Shits made that last one up.”

Shitty laughed at him. Nik turned to look at them, raising an eyebrow. His eyes flicked from Holster to shift unsettling and knowing over Ransom’s face. “On the contrary,” he said, “I think that’s probably something you should be pretty familiar with.”

“Nik,” said Shitty, a note of warning in his voice, though he never took his eyes off the screen.

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Ransom asked, scowling. He didn’t think it was an insult, exactly, but there was something in Nik’s tone that made him feel like he should be offended, like, on principle.

Nik smirked, his hand sliding a little higher on Holster’s leg, his eyes not leaving Ransom’s face. “Well, I think it can basically mean what you want it to, right Shits? That’s the beauty of this brave new world, we’re making it up as we go along.”

Sometimes in life Ransom could feel, like. Decision points. Like reaching the end of a page in one of those old choose-your-own adventure novels. To fall into a pit of snakes, turn to page 16. To get the treasure chest and solve the mystery, turn to page 9.

To get into a fight with one of your best friend’s friends over something you don’t understand at all because you’re horribly, obscurely jealous of him for reasons you _also_ don’t understand at all, turn to page 12.

He made himself relax, looping an arm around Holster’s shoulders and pulling him back against his chest. Holster made a little surprised noise but didn’t resist, and Ransom immediately felt a thousand times better, the solid, muscled warmth of Holster’s back weighting him down, anchoring him. “Give it a couple years,” he said to Nik, holding his eyes over Holster’s shoulder. “You’ll be speaking a totally different language from us unenlightened jocks.”

Nik’s eyes narrowed, and then he tossed his head, looking back at the screen. “Maybe,” he said neutrally. He didn’t take his hand off Holster’s thigh.

Holster reached up and squeezed one of Ransom’s hands, a silent _thank you for not making that a thing_ , and Ransom resisted the urge to grab his hand and never let go.

“Check It Like Crosby,” Shitty said suddenly, in a pause between lines.

Nik shook his head, his voice full of mock-disappointment. “It took you that long to come up with a pun, and that’s all you got?”

“Shut up,” Shitty said fondly.

“Consonant blend fucked you up,” Holster said dismissively, shaking his head. His hair was soft against Ransom’s neck.

“Oh yeah?” Shitty challenged. “So do better.”

Holster thought about it; Ransom could tell because he was tapping his fingers against the thigh Nik was not currently all over, rhythmic, like he did with his pencil on the edge of his notes. “Kick It Like Kaner,” he suggested finally. “No, wait. Shoot It Like Sharp.” He grinned. “How’s _that_ for consonant blends.”

Shitty made a face. “Pretty good, actually.”

Nik twisted to grin at Holster. “Totally unfair how some people are _smarter_ when they’re high.”

“You saying I couldn’t have come up with that sober?” Holster asked, and Ransom was kind of glad he can’t see his face except in weird, bird’s-eye profile, didn’t want to see him flirt. “I’m _wounded_ , Nik. Devastated.”

Nik rolled his eyes. “Something tells me you’ll recover,” he said drily.

“Shoot It Like Sharp,” Ransom said, to stop that conversation in its tracks. “Guaranteed box office hit.”

Nik raised his eyebrows, his entire face saying _I see what you’re doing_. “You guys live in this Haus,” he said slowly, “and you think you need a movie in order to watch a queer-as-hell rom-com about hockey players?”

Holster cracked up, curling in on himself, his back and shoulders shaking against Ransom’s chest, and Shitty barked a laugh. “True as fuck,” he admitted.

Ransom made himself smile. “Zip It Like Zimmermann,” he murmured, and the way Holster laughed harder helped made the smiling part easier.

Nik held his eyes. “Yeah,” he said, “ _that’s_ who I meant.”

Holster stilled a little, uncurling, and Ransom didn’t know if he was sober enough to catch the ironic note in Nik’s voice or not but it wasn’t really a risk he wanted to take. “Nik,” he said abruptly. “Can I talk to you for a sec?”

Nik blinked slow and unsurprised at him. “Sure,” he said, and gave Holster’s knee a last squeeze before he stood up.

Holster made a sort of protesting noise, whether to Nik moving or to Ransom gently pushing him forward Ransom wasn’t sure. He gave in after a minute, though, shifting sideways to lean against the wall and letting Ransom slip out from behind him. Ransom ruffled a hand through his hair, attempting reassurance, but he felt Holster’s eyes on him as they left anyway.

He led Nik down one flight of stairs and through a few hallways, into a different-enough part of the Haus that they wouldn’t be overheard, and then he spun on his heel. “Can you stop?” he asked.

Nik stared at him, his head on one side. The main problem with Nik was how well he checked off the boxes on Ransom’s lists—eight out of ten on Things Holster Likes (Appearance), including, like Emily, height and eye color, and seven out of thirteen on Things Holster Likes (Personality): confident, funny, talented and passionate about his talents, smart, clever (different from smart or funny, but not wholly unrelated to either) and observant as hell. If he’d been athletic and easygoing Ransom would have worried he was going to end up on his list of Serious Contenders, even though he was male; his Bonus Traits (good pop culture knowledge and good taste in movies) put him dangerously close to that status anyway.

“Stop what?” he asked, and fluttered his eyelashes.

“Stop—needling,” Ransom said, frustrated. “Stop implying shit, Holster’s going to start wondering what you mean—“

“You think he doesn’t already?” Nik asked. “Come on, you know he’s not dumb. He knows as well as I do that there’s something up with you.”

“There’s _nothing_ up with me,” Ransom insisted. “So just—stop, okay?”

Nik narrowed his eyes. “No.”

Ransom stared at him. “Are you fucking serious? Dude—“

“No,” said Nik again. “Because there _is_ something up, and he _does_ know it. He doesn’t know what it is, because you haven’t told him, but he can’t exactly miss you glaring daggers at me every time I touch him—“

“I’m not—“ Ransom protested, but Nik ignored him.

“—and if you think he’s happy about that tension, you must be crazy.”

Ransom licked his lips. It was the same shit he’d been talking to Holster the day before, it wasn’t exactly new, but that didn’t mean he wanted to hear it from Nik.

“If anyone should be asking anyone to stop, I think it’s probably the other way around, don’t you think?” Nik shifted, his eyes going serious. “You. Are. Not. His. Boyfriend. Maybe you want to be, I don’t fucking know. But as of right now, you’re not. Either ask him out or back the fuck off. It isn’t your place and it isn’t fair.”

“Isn’t my _place?_ ” Ransom snapped, disbelieving. “Of course it’s my place, he’s my _best friend_ —”

“Yeah,” Nik said, cutting him off. “He is. And he’s my friend, too—just my friend, like he’s just your friend. I’ve made my peace with that. Have you?”

Ransom wanted to snap, _yes_ , wanted to tell Nik to fuck right off because if anyone was overstepping bounds here it was him, but the words caught in his throat and he couldn’t stop thinking about the way Holster’s lips had twitched sideways at his touch, the way his eyes had widened.

Nik sighed sharply. “Listen. I get it. Trust me. And I know you think I’m an asshole—hell, I don’t even necessarily disagree. But you’re a good dude, Adam wouldn’t care about you so much if you weren’t. I don’t like seeing you make yourself miserable like this, and I refuse to accept you making _him_ miserable. So figure your shit out and tell him, or I will.”

He walked away, and Ransom spent a while staring at the floor. The thing was, he was pretty sure Nik didn’t get it. Because the thing about Ransom was, he wasn’t gay for his best friend.

Shit would be a lot easier if he was, if he could just ask him out straightforward and simple, but he didn’t want Holster, not in any—active sense. Wanting anyone in an active sense was so rare that it usually took being drunk as hell with someone’s tongue down his throat for him to realize it was happening at all.

He shook his head at himself. Figure your shit out and tell him. What would he even say, _I like you too much to just be your friend but I don’t want to sleep with you, promise me you won’t sleep with anyone else so you can never fall in love and leave me?_ That would win him fucking Selfish Bastard of the Year award for sure. 

The sky was going purple behind the trees beyond the quad, and Derek Nurse was sitting on the front steps of the Haus porch, looking as contemplative as Ransom felt. He wandered out and settled beside him. 

Nursey was chill; he gave Ransom a nod as he sat, and Ransom passed him a beer. “What’s up, bro?”

Nursey took the beer. “Thanks,” he said, and went back to staring out at the fading day. “You ever hate someone so much it kind of, like, circles back around?” he asked quietly.

“No,” Ransom said honestly, and the corner of Nursey’s mouth turned up.

Ransom watched some kind of big-ass bird settle in the top of a distant tree, folding its wings until it was just an indistinct blob in the twilight. “You ever like someone so much you don’t know what to do with yourself because all of the ways you’re told you can express it are things you don’t really ever feel the need to do, but not expressing it is making you feel like you might explode?”

To his credit, Nursey actually seemed to think about it before he shook his head. “Nah,” he said.

Ransom grinned and leaned back on his hands.

Nursey cracked his beer. “To the uniqueness of human experience,” he said, raising the can to the setting sun, and Ransom drank to that.

+

When he got back to their room Shitty was gone. Holster was standing in front of his closet, shirtless and scratching his head.

Ransom paused in the doorway to look at him, watch the shift of the muscles in his back. He was beautiful; that much Ransom knew, had never doubted for an instant, and he wanted to touch him—slide his hands up his back and pull him back against him like they were sitting before, make him smile. But there was nothing sexual about it, just—joyful, somehow.

He sighed and stepped fully into their room as Holster pulled out a suit jacket, squinting at it critically.

“Dressing up for something?”

Holster turned, raising his eyebrows. “Lardo’s show,” he reminded him. “Shitty’s already there, helping her set up.”

Ransom immediately felt like an asshole. “Oh, shit, sorry—you didn’t have to wait for me.”

Holster shook his head. “Nah,” he said. He smiled a little. “If I needed you I could’ve just come down and interrupted you and Nurse.”

Ransom laughed a little and wandered over to his own closet. “You, uh. Saw I was out there, huh?”

Holster made a noise of assent and pulled on a button-up. “I got a text, just now.”

Ransom froze. “Nik?” he asked, heart in his throat.

Holster was silent for a minute, like he was surprised. “Bitty,” he said eventually. “Apparently if I ever need someone to talk to, he’s here for me.”

Ransom scowled at his sock drawer. “How the hell did Bitty know?” he asked, mostly to himself.

“How does Bitty know anything?” Holster countered rhetorically, and then. “Rans.”

Ransom swallowed. “Yeah,” he said, without turning around.

“ _Rans_ ,” Holster said again, his voice gentle but prompting.

Ransom turned around. 

Holster had finished getting dressed, his suit jacket crisp across his shoulders. His cuffs were neat and his button-up was open at the throat and his eyes were soft and curious and worried.

Sometimes Holster made choose-your-own-adventure decisions too; Ransom could see it in his face.

“How do I look,” Holster asked, the cadence wrong for a question, the corner of his mouth curled and wry. 

Relief washed over Ransom like a wave, and like a wave drew back, leaving dark swathes of guilt behind. “You look great, man,” he said, truthful and guarded, trying not to let anything show that shouldn’t.

Holster tucked his glasses in his buttonhole and his hands in his pockets, his little wry grin turning into a real smile. “C’mon,” he said. “Get pretty, we gotta go take in some _cul-tcha_.”

+

Lardo’s art show was fucking phenomenal.

Her main medium was painting—huge, human-sized paintings of figures half lifelike and half alien, things that started out in a place of realism and took you somewhere else completely by the time you were done. She’d charted a very specific way for her audience to move through the space, a complicated map of colored arrows which everyone, Ransom and Holster included, ignored.

Ransom did wander around in a red square for a minute before he realized that Lardo was in fact trolling said audience, and that ignoring it was the only way to see her art at all.

“I get it,” Holster said, stroking his chin, when she popped in to say hi. “Art is in truth inaccessible to everyone but the artist, right?”

Lardo shrugged. “Sure,” she said. “Mostly I thought it’d be funny.”

Ransom looked a little closer at her. “Larissa,” he said, mock-scandalized, “are you wearing _lipstick?_ ”

She gave him a haughty look. “You must be mistaken, sir,” she said, “there’s no one here by that name, and if there was she would certainly not be caught dead in such a girly thing as makeup, because everyone knows that being girly is bad.”

Ransom shook his head at her. “I was just going to compliment you on the color,” he said.

Lardo raised her eyebrows and fished around in her pocket, coming up with a little silver cylinder. “You wanna try it on?” she asked wickedly. “I’m sure it’d look marvelous with your skin tone.”

There was a challenge in her eyes, and Ransom still had weird energy under his skin from his fight with Nik and his not-conversation with Holster and his goddamn fucking _omnipresent confusion_ and he was really, really bad at not taking challenges, especially Lardo’s, and. 

“Yeah,” he said, “why the fuck not.”

Lardo looked delighted; Ransom cast a glance sideways at Holster. “You told me get pretty,” he said by way of explanation. 

Holster laughed, a little, but his eyes were a little wide and Ransom wanted to lean in and poke the edge of his mouth again, recreate the same circumstances from earlier—an experiment derailed—maybe actually find out what the results would have been. But Lardo was pressing the silver cylinder into his hand and then immediately taking it back again, scowling. “You will definitely get this all over your face,” she said, matter-of-fact. “Let me do it.”

“Uh,” said Ransom, “okay.”

Lardo hooked her hands behind his ears and tugged him down until he was crouching a little, their faces level. She took the top off the lipstick—it was a really nice color, a kind of deepish red—and held it up. “Do this,” she said, and made a weird, half-open shape with her mouth.

Ransom tried; Lardo rolled her eyes and did her best.

She was squinting critically at his mouth when a short, shy-looking girl tugged at her elbow. “Um,” she said, “Lardo?”

“Yep,” said Lardo, without breaking her intense examination of her work.

“There’s a guy here who says he wants to buy one of your pieces.”

Lardo’s eyebrows shot up. “Hot damn,” she said. She slapped Ransom on the arm. “Yer beautiful, kid.”

She followed the other girl away through the crowd.

Ransom pressed his lips together like he’d seen girls do after they did their makeup. “How do I look?” he asked Holster, a little rueful.

Holster stared at him for a long moment. His gaze wavered, dipped to his mouth, and then flicked back up to his eyes. “What did you talk to Nik about?” he asked, abrupt, as if Ransom asking the same question he’d offered as an out earlier had undone it, folded the time between now and then up and cut it away. 

“I,” said Ransom, and swallowed. “I apologized,” he tried, “for being so weird at him.”

Again the waver, dip, and rise of Holster’s eyes, like he was reading something in the planes of Ransom’s face. “You’re lying,” he said, almost—detached, like it didn’t matter.

Ransom shifted his jaw. “Yeah,” he said, miserable.

Holster closed his eyes for a minute. When he opened them, he didn’t look directly at Ransom’s face, but kind of—beyond him, past his left ear. “Okay,” he said. “I’m going home.”

He turned away. Ransom touched his shoulder to try and stop him, but Holster shrugged him off. “Don’t, man, okay? I’ll see you later, just.”

“Yeah,” said Ransom, and watched him walk away. “Okay.”

He was staring at a painting so hard his eyes were aching when Lardo reappeared. “What happened to your boy?” she asked, knocking his knee with her own.

Ransom coughed and ran a hand over his face. “He had to bounce,” he said as casually as he could. “He says your work is fuckin’ awesome, though.” He hadn’t, in so many words, but he’d been thinking it as clearly as Ransom had, he knew that much.

Lardo gave a little pleased wriggle.

Ransom looked around. “Where’s yours?” he asked. “I haven’t seen him all night.” He could really use a good, chill conversation with Shitty right now.

Lardo sighed. “He was here earlier, but he got called away.” When Ransom raised his eyebrows at her, she bit her lip. “Zimmermann emergency,” she said. “I think The Plan kind of backfired in numerous ways.”

Ransom frowned. “Jack’s okay, though?”

Lardo nodded. “Bitty found him drunk,” she said, “but if he weren’t okay, I’d know it by now. So would you, probably.”

Ransom whistled. “Shit,” he said. “You weren’t kidding.”

Lardo laid a hand on his arm. “Speaking of, you look like you need a drink,” she said. “Dramatic night, huh?”

Ransom let himself be led to the table in the corner, where the last vestiges of a keg and some mostly-empty wine bottles stood abandoned. “I’ll say this for Shits,” she said, pouring him a solo cup of red wine from three separate bottles, “he’s definitely a catalyst.”

Ransom laughed a little. Lardo looked at him sharp-eyed over the rim of her own solo-cup-cum-wineglass. “Hey, Rans.”

Ransom swallowed his wine. “Yeah,” he said.

Lardo kept watching him for another long minute. “Nothing,” she said at last. “Just. You know I love you, yeah?”

There was a tight heat in Ransom’s chest; it was probably a bad idea to try and drown it in wine but god, he wanted to. “Yeah,” he said, and reached out to pull her into his side. “You too. I. Sorry.”

She hugged him hard for a second. “Doesn’t really seem like I’m the one you should apologize to,” she said as she pulled away. She waved a hand. “Enjoy my art for a while, get your head right, okay?”

Ransom _did_ love her—he really fucking did—but right now he was tired as hell of people acting like they knew better than he did about how to handle his shit. “Yeah,” he said vaguely. “Thanks.”

“By the way,” she said as he left her by the drinks, “you really rock that lip color.”

He did spend another while wandering the gallery, drinking and eavesdropping on the random old couples scattered in amongst the tipsy, swaying, and philosophizing college kids. He heard one LAX bro, standing in goal-tending stance in front of one of Lardo’s more psychedelic pieces, muttering to himself. “Shit, man,” he said, “shit, I saw something like this on Molly one time.”

The grey-haired woman to his left pushed her cat-eye glasses up her nose and said drily, “Doesn’t sound like a very good trip.”

Ransom laughed, looking around to see if Holster had heard, too—and stopped. What the fuck was he _doing_ here?

He put his solo cup back by the wine—there weren’t any more clean ones, and Ransom liked to give back to his community—and left, breathing in long breaths of the cold night air to steady himself. He wasn’t drunk—he was barely past tipsy—but the weirdness of the day had settled into his veins and he couldn’t quite get his feet under him correctly, couldn’t feel—balanced.

The lights were off in their room when he got there, Holster a curled shape in the bottom bunk. He slipped silently in, took off his jacket and his shoes, and settled at the end of the bunk. “Bro,” he said quietly.

Holster shifted, but didn’t turn, and Ransom swallowed.

“I’m sorry,” he said to the dark. “I’ve been weird as hell today and I—I’m really. Fucking sorry.” He stared down at his hands, picked anxiously at his nails. “But,” he said, “I also—I really don’t want to talk about it. And I _know_ that’s not fair, and I know we don’t, we don’t have secrets because why the fuck would we have secrets but—“

Holster sat up very quickly, reaching out to grab his wrist and stop Ransom from destroying his nails even further. “Don’t lie to me,” he said.

Ransom stared at him. The room was dim but not dark, Holster’s eyes pale and serious. “If there’s shit you don’t wanna say, because—whatever,” he continued, “for someone else’s sake or because you have to get something right in your own head first or whatever, I don’t care, that’s fine.” His face softened. “Of course it’s fine. But don’t lie, man. Just. Don’t fucking do that to me.”

Ransom nodded, jerkily, his heart in his throat.

Holster’s eyes slid off his face and away. “Sucked,” he said shortly. “Seeing that. Maybe you’re a good liar to other people, I dunno, I’ve seen you pull off some truly impressive homework excuses in your time but, bro.” He shook his head. “Me? There’s no point. I’ll always know. Don’t make me watch you lie to me.”

Ransom nodded again. “Sorry,” he said, and it came out a little ragged. “I’m sorry.”

Holster loosened the grip around his wrist, shifted his hand downward so they were palm to palm instead. “S’okay,” he said. The corner of his mouth curled up again, his eyes on their joined hands. “One lie in three years, not exactly a bad ratio.”

Ransom laughed, feeling giddy with relief, and when he sobered Holster was finally looking at him, half-smiling and sad. When Ransom met his eyes he wrinkled his nose. “I’m a possessive bastard, though,” he said. “Don’t really like that there’s something about you Nik knows and I don’t.”

Ransom grinned at him, feeling lighter than he had all day, carefully didn’t think about how much of that feeling was based around the warmth of Holster’s hand in his own. “If it makes you feel any better, he doesn’t know anything nearly as well as he thinks he does.”

Holster’s smile grew. “Does,” he said. “Thanks.”

Ransom nodded, and they lapsed into a warm sort of silence. Holster’s eyes lingered on his face, and after a minute he said, “you’re still wearing that lipstick.”

Ransom felt his cheeks heat (what the hell) and nodded. “Yeah,” he said. He frowned a little. “I think I got some looks at the art show.”

Holster raised his free hand to Ransom’s chin, nudged at it with long, calloused fingers so Ransom would turn this way and that. “Admiring ones, I should hope,” he said, his voice teasing. “You should go femme more often.” 

Ransom narrowed his eyes at him, and Holster winked, solemn. He dropped his hand and pulled back his other, too, leaving Ransom’s hand sitting empty on the sheets.

“Yeah, yeah,” Ransom said, to cover his disappointment. “This is the part where you tell me you’d love me no matter what, right, Dad?”

Holster took a little breath. “Yeah,” he said seriously. “It is.”

Ransom looked away from his face, couldn’t—take the earnestness in his eyes, felt like even more of a piece of shit because—why couldn’t he just have this, not try and make it into something else, something more selfish, if he didn’t want sex what was his _fucking problem_ —

Holster sighed and lay back down, folding his hands under his head. “Go to sleep, sport,” he said. “Junior. Buckaroo. Bubbeleh.”

Ransom stood up, shaking his head at himself. “Yes, Papa Birkholtz,” he said, and clambered up to the top bunk to sacrifice himself melodramatically to the Haus ghosts.

+

Holster shook him awake. “Dude. Dude!”

Ransom blinked, shaking his head. Holster’s face was way too close and way too happy for five seconds after total unconsciousness. “Whazzp,” he managed.

“Jack and Bitty,” Holster said dramatically, hopping down from the ladder to spread his arms like a showman. “Bitty and Jack.”

Ransom sat up, staring at him. “Where? What? Tell!”

“Let me set the scene,” Holster said, and cleared his throat into his fist. He closed his eyes for an excruciating moment and then snapped them open again. “So there I was,” he said, in his best movie-trailer-narration-voice (which was fucking incredible), “casually coming back from relieving myself of my morning frustrations in the shower—“

“Ew,” said Ransom mildly.

“And what do I see, as I peered around the corner, but Jack and Bitty—our very own Bitty and Jack—trip-tripping up the stairs—“

Ransom snorted. “Trip-tripping,” he repeated, “what are they, fucking billy goats?”

Holster glared at him, a hand on his hip. “Trip-tripping,” he said icily, “and _holding hands._ ”

Ransom blinked at him. “No fucking way.”

“It gets better, my fine friend,” Holster said, his eyebrows all the way up. “Being a master sneak and also an incorrigible nosy asshole, I followed them.”

He paused. Ransom could throttle him. “ _And?_ ”

“And they _kissed_ ,” Holster said dramatically. “Right outside Bitty’s door, just _casual_ , like they’d been doing it for _ages_.”

“No fucking way,” Ransom said again. “No _fucking_ way, it finally happened!”

“It finally happened,” Holster said, eyes shining, and Ransom couldn’t help it, threw himself down off the top bunk and into his arms, spinning him around. Holster laughed, wrapping him up tight. 

“Shit,” Ransom said when they separated. “Shit.”

“I know,” said Holster. “But I think—we can’t say anything, right? Until they come to us.”

Ransom nodded. “Yeah,” he said, “you’re right.”

Holster was still half-grinning, happiness caught in the corners of his eyes, and Ransom was—having trouble fully looking at him. “Dude,” Holster said. “You look like you full-on cannibalized someone last night, bro.”

Ransom blinked at him. “What?”

Holster gestured to his face. “Lipstick,” he said dramatically. “Lipstick _everywhere._ ”

“Oh, shit,” groaned Ransom, and went to deal with that before he got any weird questions.

When he got back to the room Holster was perched on the top bunk, texting. Ransom ran his nails over his foot and Holster aimed a kick at his face, which Ransom dodged. “Texting Shitty the good news?” he asked.

Holster shook his head. “Nah,” he said. “I figure I’ll let Jack or Bits drop that bombshell.”

“So,” said Ransom, prompting. “Who are you texting?”

“Emily,” Holster said, gnawing at his thumbnail in thought. When Ransom made an inquiring noise, he looked up, brows furrowed. “From our double date last week, you remember.”

Ransom felt his heart sink. “Oh,” he said. “I didn’t know you were still talking to her.”

Holster blinked at his phone. “Could’ve sworn I told you,” he said absently. “She texted me right after to apologize for her friend. Apparently she didn’t know her very well, had no idea she was a secret racist.”

“White people,” Ransom muttered, scowling at his sock drawer.

“White people,” Holster agreed amicably, and went back to texting.

+

Holster and Emily kept texting, and Ransom kept coming up with reasons to steal Holster’s phone—not to read anything, he wasn’t enough of a shithead to breach privacy like that, but just to stop him from checking it all the time.

Shitty noticed how annoyed he was by it; he nudged Ransom’s shoulder while they were chilling on the quad one day, breaking Ransom’s death-glare at Holster where he was bent over his phone. “You know,” he said. “You deserve this.”

Ransom stared at him, eyebrows raised. “Excuse me?”

“This,” Shitty said, indicating Holster and his omnipresent phone, “is exactly what hanging out with either of you alone is like.”

Ransom shook his head dismissively. “We don’t text _that_ much.”

Shitty shook his head at him. “Approximately how many hours, total, have you been apart today?”

Ransom thought about that. “Maybe three? Classes and shit.”

“And how many text messages were sent, in those long, lonely three hours?”

Ransom abjectly refused to take out his phone and check. “I dunno, like twenty? That’s not that—“

“Fifty-three,” Holster said, without looking up from his phone. “Approximately.”

Ransom glared at him. “Traitor.”

Holster flashed him a sideways grin; Ransom flipped him off; Holster grabbed his wrist and tried to maneuver his finger up his own nose; Ransom shoved him over into the grass and sat on him.

“What’s your snapchat streak?” Shitty asked, relentless, like nothing had ever happened.

“Sixty-five days,” said Holster, a little muffled. “It’d be longer, but snapchat just introduced that feature.”

“See,” said Shitty. “Taste of your own medicine.”

Ransom slowly got off of Holster, brushing off his knees. He didn’t _like_ his own medicine. He wasn’t supposed to take his own medicine. No one else was supposed to have a connection to Holster the way he did, not in any aspect, even one as stupid as constant texting.

He ran a hand over his head. “I think I might go for a run,” he said, a little too abrupt.

Holster blinked up at him. “Bro.”

Ransom gave him a smile, shook his head a little. He opened his mouth, but he couldn’t quite find anything to say that wasn’t a lie, even a small one like _I’m okay_. He closed his mouth, shrugged, and went to get his running gear.

He liked running, always had. He thought better, moving—always went for a run before big tests and important decisions, to make sure the version of himself that made the call was the most informed one, the smartest one. 

He got halfway through his normal route when he slowed. Holster was standing under a tree, waiting for him. 

“What the hell,” Ransom said, jogging up to him.

Holster smirked at him. “What,” he said, “you don’t think I know where you usually run?”

“Yeah but like, the timing—“

Holster’s smirk grew. “You don’t think I know your average running speed?” he asked, voice laughing.

Ransom shook his head, sweaty and impressed. “Next question, genius,” he said, and Holster sketched an ironic half-bow, “why?”

Holster’s grin faded. “Because you’re upset with me about Emily,” he said, “and I wanna know why.”

Ransom bit his lip. “I’m not upset with you,” he said, holding Holster’s eyes so he would know it was the truth. “I guess I’m just—“ he swallowed. “I’m jealous, you know? Didn’t feel good having Shitty compare us.”

Holster frowned at him. “Compare—? What, you and Emily?”

Ransom rolled his shoulders, squinting in the evening sun. “Yeah,” he said. “Saying, like, you texting her all the time is what it’s like when I’m not around, you know.”

“Dude,” said Holster. “ _Dude_. I met Emily like two weeks ago. She texts a lot. That’s all. You—“ He shook his head. “I’ve been glued to your side for three years and I still want you to know every dumbass thought that pops into my head and I want to know every dumbass thought that pops into _your_ head because you’re my _fucking favorite_ , okay?”

Ransom grinned helplessly, ducking his head. “Okay,” he said.

“Good,” said Holster. “Stop being jealous over something so stupid and come back to the Haus with me.”

Ransom gave him a little salute and fell in beside him. 

“We’re going on a date tomorrow,” Holster said, tucking his hands into his pockets, and just like that, Ransom’s mood dropped again, his heart fucking yo-yo-ing around in his chest. He gritted his teeth hard enough that he almost missed it when Holster asked, “you wanna come?”

“On your date?” Ransom asked, trying not to sound bitter.

“We’d find you a different friend,” Holster offered, “a better friend.”

Ransom shook his head. “I’m not really—looking,” he said, because it was true.

“You’re not looking… for free food?” Holster asked archly.

Ransom glanced at him sideways. “You saying you’ll pay for me and your girl, Mr. Moneybags?”

“Worth it,” Holster said sincerely, “if I can come get you to have fun.”

Shit, Ransom must have been acting worse than he’d thought. He should say yes, probably—reassure Holster that there was nothing seriously wrong, have a little fun, maybe meet a girl that would distract him from the memory of Holster’s hand in his. But. Nik was one thing, Nik who was only a sexual, not a _romantic_ , threat, Nik who he still hadn’t apologized to even though he really really should—Nik was one thing. But he wasn’t sure he could take watching Holster woo someone he really liked.

He took a long breath. “Sorry, man,” he said. “You guys have fun, though.”

Holster blinked at him. “Rans—“

“I’m gonna finish my run, if that’s cool,” said Ransom, and didn’t wait for an answer.

+

He got through that night and the next morning mostly on autopilot, tapping into the reserves of energy he usually saved for finals to help him sort his head out, and got—basically nowhere. 

He needed to talk to Shitty. 

Because—he wasn’t gay but maybe he wasn’t entirely straight, either, maybe he was some weird variety of queer he didn’t know shit about, and if nothing else it seemed like Lardo and Shitty had stopped dancing around each other so maybe he’d have some advice on how to—go about that, how to turn your best friend into something more than a best friend, how to figure out how to best phrase the truth.

He found Lardo and Shitty (and Jack and Bitty, curling close to one another over Jack’s laptop) in the kitchen, talking to that weird dude Dan.

Dan could wait. 

“Lacrosse douche, scram,” he said, sliding into the room. “Shitty, can I talk to you?”

“Sure,” said Shitty comfortably. “That concludes our talk for the day, Dan. For homework, consider the idea that sexual identities could serve as a chronicle of past experience, rather than a framework to be adhered to.”

Ransom blinked. Yep. This was the conversation he needed to have.

“Um,” said Dan, his hand hovering over the rest of the sixpack on the table at his elbow. “Can I—”

Shitty waved a hand at him. “Toss one to my stressed-out friend here and take the rest.”

“Thanks, man,” said Dan fervently. He tossed a beer to Ransom, who caught it.

“I hope you get the advice you need, bro,” said Dan, hooking his fingers through the plastic ties of the sixpack wandering out of the Haus.

“Nice guy,” Shitty remarked. “Kind of.”

“You want us to leave, Rans?” Jack asked.

Us. That was cute as fuck. Ransom shook his head. “Nah,” he said, because at this point he was _fucking tired_ of keeping this shit a secret and the more advice he could get the better. “Probably better you’re here, actually.” He turned to face the two of them. “How’d you guys do it?”

Jack just stared blankly at him. Bitty raised his eyebrows. “Do what?”

“Y’know,” said Ransom. “Confess. Talk about your—” he wiggled his fingers “— _feelings_ for each other.”

Bitty went red, Jack pale. Shitty groaned. “ _Dammit_ , Rans, I was trying to let them think we didn’t know!”

“Know what?” Lardo asked in a wondering falsetto, her eyes impossibly wide. “Is something going on between you two?”

Bitty put his head in his hands. Jack scowled at all of them. “You guys knew?”

“Dude,” said Ransom. Better not to mention Holster’s spying, but then again, he didn’t have to. “You’ve been holding hands for like three days straight. Plus, what do you think Shitty’s plan was all about?”

Bitty let out a squeak. “What?” he demanded from between his fingers.

Shitty sighed. “Full disclosure,” he said, “I asked Nik to flirt with you because I wanted to make Jack jealous and threatened so maybe he’d stop sitting around pining and actually do something about it.” He scratched the back of his neck. “Didn’t, uh. Think it through too well, but it kinda worked, right?”

Bitty blinked at him, then smirked sideways at Jack. “Pining, huh?” he asked teasingly.

Jack didn’t look at him, just wrapped an arm around his shoulders and pulled him against his chest. “Thanks,” he told Shitty quietly.

Shitty grinned at him. “Anything for you.”

Ransom cleared his throat. “You guys didn’t actually answer my question,” he said. “The talking, and the feelings?”

Bitty shifted a little to look at him, though he didn’t pull away from Jack’s chest. “We um, haven’t, really? We just kissed and it mostly. Sorted itself out.”

Ransom rolled his eyes. “Great,” he said. He turned to look at Lardo and Shitty. “What about you two?”

Shitty stared at him like a deer in the headlights. “I don’t know what you mean,” he said as naturally as he could manage. “What’s there to talk about?”

“Yeah, we’re just friends who occasionally have awesome sex,” Lardo said conversationally.

Ransom rolled his eyes, looked at Bitty and Jack, and rolled his eyes again. Bitty rolled his eyes back; Jack looked totally blown away, like the idea that Shitty and Lardo might be having sex was groundbreaking.

“Awesome, huh,” Shitty murmured to Lardo.

She gave him a sideways, warning look. “Shut up.”

Ransom looked back and forth between them. Why were all of his friends emotionally stunted morons? “You’re fucking kidding,” he said. “So my options are kiss Holster without talking to him, or have awesome sex with Holster without talking to him?”

Shitty blinked. “Goddamn,” he said, “I owe Nik twenty bucks.”

Ransom ran a frustrated hand over his head. Of course they’d talked about it. “You don’t, though,” he said. “Because I don’t really want to do either of those things. I just want him to know how I feel, because I’ve been really shitty lately and I know he knows but he doesn’t know why and that fucking _sucks_.”

Shitty looked at Bitty, who shifted to look at him more fully. “How _do_ you feel?” he asked quietly.

Ransom tossed his can of beer from hand to hand. “Jealous,” he admitted. “Of Nik, but not just him, everyone who’s close with him at all, like. Romantically.” He blew out a breath. “That’s the weird thing is like—I don’t care about who he sleeps with! I just get worried that he’ll meet someone he really likes and they’ll get married and then I won’t—I won’t be the most important person in his life anymore.” He stopped tossing the can, staring hard at the floor. “And I don’t think he’ll ever stop being the most important person in mine.”

It was the best way he’d figured out to put it into words so far and he was making mental notes on how to phrase it to Holster himself when there was a voice from the doorway.

“Uh,” said Holster, “i-is there some team meeting I forgot about?”

Ransom straightened up slowly, putting the can on the table and turning to look at him. He was standing in the doorway, his bag over his shoulder, his eyes wide and fixed on Ransom.

“Hey,” Ransom said, and it came out a little thick. “Thought you were in class.”

Holster took a step into the room, his glasses sliding a little down his nose. He didn’t fix them. “You weren’t there,” he said. “I wanted to make sure you were okay.”

“We were just leaving, actually,” Lardo announced, but Ransom barely heard her over the rush in his ears. He swallowed, hard, as Holster slowly came over to lean against the table next to him.

“H-how much of that did you hear?” Ransom asked.

“Enough to know we should probably talk,” Holster said simply, and then his eyes crinkled up warm and he adopted his best Sam Gamgee voice, “That is, a bunch of stuff about a ring, and a Dark Lord, and something about the end of the world, but nothing important.”

Ransom laughed, ragged, and pressed the heel of his hand to his eyes. “Fuck, man,” he said. “Sorry.”

Holster stared at him. “For what? Saying it, or the fact that I heard?”

“I,” said Ransom, and swallowed. “I was going to tell you. I was just trying to figure out how.”

Holster crossed his arms. “Just—lay it out straight, yeah?” The corner of his mouth turned up. “Or not so straight, as the case may be.”

“Okay,” said Ransom. “Okay.” He took a breath. “Well—my main problem is I don’t want to sleep with you.”

Holster’s eyebrows flew all the way up. “That—um,” he said, and rubbed a hand over his jaw. “That does kind of seem like a problem.”

Ransom scowled at him. “Don’t make fun of me.”

Holster held up both hands. “I’m not,” he said, “swear to God.”

Ransom watched his suspiciously for another minute, and then continued. “If I did want to sleep with you,” he said, and this was—the hard part to put into words, “I think—the rest of the stuff I’m feeling would make a hell of a lot more sense.”

“Okay,” Holster said slowly, is voice a little high and odd, “what—what stuff are you feeling?”

Ransom’s hands were shaking; he pressed them together, hard, and stared at them. “Like,” he said, and then cleared his throat. “Like I want to hang out with you for the rest of my life and always make you happy. Like—like I’ll never find someone who I want to be around so constantly and so honestly. Like.” He raised his eyes to Holster’s face. “Like maybe this is what being—being in love is supposed to feel like.”

Holster licked his lips. “Well that’s okay then,” he said a little weakly, “because I’m feeling those things too.”

Ransom stared at him. “You—“ he started. “But—“

“You wanna know why I don’t want to date dudes?” Holster interrupted.

“Because you’re only like 20% gay, or whatever?” Ransom said, startled out of his own objections.

Holster squinted. “Probably closer to 40 or 50, these days,” he said matter-of-factly. “It fluctuates. But no, that just means I’m attracted to more women than men, has nothing to do with the kind of attraction, or what I want from them.” He licked his lips again. “I don’t wanna date dudes because I already have everything I would want from a relationship with a dude.”

Ransom stared at him.

“With you, idiot,” Holster said, exasperated, fond. He reached out to touch Ransom’s jaw. “I would 100% be dating you if I thought you were interested at all. Hell, I basically am dating you, even without the interest.”

Ransom stood up in a rush, stepped up into his space. “It’s there,” he said. “The interest. In—in dating, anyway.” He grinned, a little, through his nervousness. “Especially if it means changing basically nothing.”

“Does,” said Holster absently, but his eyes were on Ransom’s mouth and his hand was still on his jaw, feather-light. “Or. Almost nothing. Can I—“

“Yeah,” said Ransom. “Yes.”

Holster leaned forward, closing the gap between their mouths, and Ransom had kissed his fair share of girls but either this was different or he hadn’t given kissing his proper attention before because Holster’s mouth was soft and he could feel him smiling, a little, and he tangled his fingers in Holster’s shirt and pulled him closer, kissed him deeper, and Holster kissed back, breathing staccato through his nose.

“Okay,” he said against Ransom’s jaw when they separated. “Yep. Cool.”

“Good at that, bro,” Ransom said, and nudged Holster’s nose with his.

Holster laughed at him, pulling further back. “Thanks.”

“Good kisser,” Ransom murmured. “Gotta add that to the list.”

Holster raised his eyebrows. “What list?”

Fuck. Fuck. Ransom stared at him. “Um,” he said.

Holster narrowed his eyes. “Remember,” he said. “You lie, I know.”

Ransom swallowed. “I might—have a list? Of shit you like? For the somewhat masochistic purpose of finding you the perfect girlfriend?”

To his surprise, Holster looked delighted. “Oh my god, really?” he said. “Show me, show me!”

Ransom sighed and bent down to fish around in his bag. He pulled out his laptop and sat back down, opening it up and navigating to a folder within a folder within a folder. The destination was entitled ‘Not Porn.’

Holster draped himself across his shoulders. “Interesting name,” he said.

Ransom grinned. “Here’s my logic,” he said. “Who’s the most likely person to be snooping through my laptop?”

“Me,” said Holster easily. “Followed closely by the tied pair of Lardo and Shits.”

“Right,” said Ransom. “Now, we’re bros. Bros totally check out each others’ porn collections, so if I called it ‘Porn’ you would definitely look at it. _Plus_ ,” he continued, “I’m not supposed to lie to you, so I couldn’t really call it anything else, and there is not, in fact, porn in this folder.”

He opened it up.

“You included the names of your private files that I will probably never see in the lying-ban?” Holster asked, sounding touched. “ _Bro_.”

Ransom shrugged, embarrassed. “I really hated it,” he mumbled. “Hurting you.”

Holster kissed him on the cheek, hard, and Ransom bit his lip.

“So if this is your Not-Porn,” Holster said, “Does that mean there’s a very honestly-named file in here called ‘Definitely Porn’?”

Ransom shook his head. “Nah,” he said. “I don’t have any.” He opened up his lists and sat back.

Holster made an inquiring noise, and then got distracted by the screen. He shifted away from Ransom’s back to sink into the seat next to him as he read. He was silent for a minute, and then he laughed, loud and sharp and amazed.

“Dude,” Holster said, “you know these lists describe you, right?”

Ransom stared at him. “What? No they don’t,” he said.

Holster raised his eyebrows at the screen. “Appearance,” he said. “Tall, like really tall. Check. Super dark eyes. Check. Good jaw. Check—“

“You like my jaw?” Ransom asked, surprised.

Holster gave him an unimpressed look. “Bro, you have the best jaw at Samwell. Common fucking knowledge.” He turned back to the list. “Good eyebrows. Dark hair. Medium-sized tits, non-applicable. Impressive shoulder-to-hip ratio—check as _hell_. Long eyelashes, check. Cute blush—“ He stopped and looked at Ransom over the top of his glasses.

Ransom stared back. “What,” he said.

“Love you,” said Holster, a little too quickly, and then went red, and Ransom felt his own face heat. Holster swallowed and turned back to the screen. “Ch-checkity check check,” he muttered.

“Alright! Okay. I get it.” Ransom protested. “No need to get all—sappy.”

Holster grinned at him. “Yeah, God forbid we talk about feelings in this conversation about feelings.”

“Shut up,” said Ransom, and slung an arm around his shoulders, pulling him close. He shoved his face into Holster’s hair and tried to breathe right, all the tension of the last few weeks still kind of—lingering at the front of his skull.

“That’s what this was all about, huh?” said Holster quietly. “Your thing with Emily, your thing with Nik.”

Ransom nodded.

“You’re dumb as fuck if you thought either of them was going to replace you,” Holster said matter-of-factly. He shifted if Ransom’s arms. “I should text Emily and cancel that date.”

Ransom swallowed, letting him go. “You—don’t have to,” he said.

Holster gave him a puzzled look. “I don’t?”

Ransom ran a hand over his face. “Look,” he said. “This is why I didn’t tell you for so long. I don’t want,” he sighed. “I don’t want to limit you, you know? I don’t wanna be like, _hey_ , be with me who can only offer you this weird sexless relationship when you could be falling for someone who does want sex—“

Holster put his phone on the table. “So like,” he said, “explain. You think you’re like what Shits and Nik were talking about the other day? Biromantic?”

Ransom lifted a shoulder. “Maybe just gay-romantic, to be honest, bro. Haven’t really felt like this about a girl, that’s for sure.”

Holster nodded, his eyes serious. “And the—sex thing. You don’t want to have sex with me because you don’t think I’m attractive, or—“

“No,” said Ransom immediately, cutting him off. “ _No_ , dude, I think you’re hot as hell, that’s like objective fact at this point.” He sighed. “I just think—if I were gay, I would think about it more. Sex with you, sex with other dudes.” 

Holster cocked his head, his cheeks a little pink. “How often to do you think about sex at all? You said you have no porn folder.”

Ransom shrugged. “Basically never? When a girl is actively like sending me ‘do you want to have sex’ signals, and then only to be like ‘nah’ or ‘I guess’?” He waved a hand. “Shitty gave us that whole speech about the evils of the porn industry freshman year and I never really looked back.”

Holster tapped his fingers on the table, and Ransom grinned, liked being able to see his brain work. “Maybe you’re ace, dude,” Holster said finally.

Ransom raised his eyebrows, skeptical. “But like. I have had sex, and it didn’t traumatize me or whatever.”

“A ringing endorsement,” Holster said dryly. “I take it back, you’re the horniest man in America.”

Ransom laughed. “Canada, bro.” He pressed a hand to his chest. “A true nation knows no borders but those of the heart.”

“Horniest man in Canada,” Holster corrected himself solemnly. “Look,” he said. “You said you don’t care about who I have sex with.”

Ransom nodded. “Yeah.”

“So how are you limiting me?” Holster asked. “We can date, which is what we have been doing except with more kissing—“

“And probably flowers,” Ransom mumbled. When Holster raised his eyebrows at him, he flushed. “Listen,” he said, “I’d be an awesome boyfriend, in theory, and I haven’t gotten the chance to test it out on anyone else.”

Holster grinned at him. “I’ll be your guinea pig any day.” He ran a hand through his hair. “Anyway. We date. Kissing and flowers and exactly what we’ve always been, yeah? And if I want to hook up with someone, I can, because you don’t give a shit about gross sex stuff.”

Ransom sighed. “My problem is, gross sex stuff can lead to gross heart stuff.” He squinted at Holster. “You know? And I don’t think it would really be fair of me to stop it if it does.”

Holster examined his face for a long time. “Okay,” he said, “then—we just make it clear we’re a package deal.”

Ransom blinked at him. “Huh?”

Holster grinned. “Two boyfriends for the price of one,” he said. “Only they’re dating each other and only one of them is dating you.”

“Like April and her gay boyfriend and his gay boyfriend,” Ransom said, “from Parks.”

Holster nodded. “Exactly,” he said. “In fact I think my only option is to date Aubrey Plaza.” He wrinkled his nose. “Right? That sounds right. I think that’s right.”

Ransom hooked his ankle around his under the table. “She’d only leave you for Chris Pratt,” he warned.

“That’s okay,” said Holster, and leaned against Ransom’s side. “I’d leave me for Chris Pratt.”

“I’d leave you for Chris Pratt too,” Ransom deadpanned. “Parks Pratt, though, not Guardians Pratt or Jurassic World Pratt. Dude would be an awesome body pillow.”

“That does sound nice,” Holster said. He twisted and dug his fingers into Ransom’s side. “Better than cuddling up with your bony ass.”

“Bony?” Ransom said, mock-offended, catching his hands and holding them. “Did you mean my extremely well-cut, rock-hard physique? I thought you said I had an impressive shoulder-to-waist ratio, br—“

Holster kissed him, laughing against his mouth, and Ransom let go of his hands to push his glasses up his face and into his hair. Holster pulled away a little. “Do me a favor,” he said.

Ransom made an inquiring noise.

“Don’t put lipstick on ever again,” Holster said. “That shit was _dangerous_.”

Ransom smirked. “I’ll add it to my Things Holster Hates list.”

Holster stared at him. “Do you really have one of those?”

Ransom nodded. “Two,” he admitted. “Legitimate, For-Realsies Hates, and Hates But It’s Hilarious, to whip out at parties.” He grinned. “Guess which one ‘me in lipstick’ is going on.”

“I’ll kill you,” Holster said levelly. “I will legitimately, for-realsies kill you.”

“Nah,” said Ransom, and thumbed at the corner of his mouth. “I’m your fucking favorite, remember? You’ll still kill me, but it’ll be hilarious.”

“True,” Holster admitted, and kissed the pad of his thumb. “Now I wanna watch Parks. You wanna go watch Parks?”

“Yeah,” said Ransom, and let Holster pull him to his feet.


End file.
